


years that have gone, and years that will come

by rileyhart



Series: in any version of reality, i'd find you, and i'd choose you [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Soulmate AU, time for some mileven angst!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 02:31:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10844643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rileyhart/pseuds/rileyhart
Summary: soulmate au where you are born with ability to feel the other's emotions and pain.---Mike Wheeler has been able to feel his soulmate for as long as he can remember, and he's been attempting to find her ever since.And he's finally about to find her, after all those years of searching.





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> this is the longest fic i've ever written, and i hope you enjoy it!

The pain had hardly been bearable before Mike had met her, but after — when she is gone — that is the definition of unbearable.

He had grown up with a constant ache of pain, an ache of panic, of loneliness. Never his, always hers. He'd been sure his soulmate was a her for as long as he could remember, despite knowing that some people could have a soulmate of the same sex, his definitely wasn't.

His was a her.

He knew the difference between their emotions, he wasn't really sure how he knew, he just did. One was his, and the other was hers.

When he was young, barely talking, that's when he first felt the staticky flutters that were her emotions spike and become so vivid and real it was like someone was drilling into his arm, but it wasn't his arm, it was her arm. But he could feel it, and it felt so real, he'd sat up in bed and screamed at a volume seemingly impossible for a child of his size. Ever since that night, the emotional connection between Mike and her (whoever she was) was strong. He could feel her every emotion, even when her heart just palpitated too fast.

It was unusual to have such a strong connection with your soulmate so young, unless you knew them from a young age, usually your connection with them didn’t become clear until you met them.

* * *

 At age seven, Mike asked his sister (who was twelve, which to a seven-year-old is practically an adult), “Can you feel your soulmate?”

They were sitting on the floor of the living room, close to the TV so they didn’t have to get up off the couch and walk all the way to the TV if they wanted to change the channel.

Nancy shrugged, “Sometimes, but not very often… I’m only twelve, I just probably haven’t met him yet, I’ve got loads of time.”

A sudden terrifying question found its way into Mike’s mind, “What if you never meet your soulmate?”

Nancy glanced back into the kitchen — her mother inside it, cooking dinner for the whole family — and thought of her parents. “Some people never do, so they marry the wrong person for the wrong reasons because that’s easier than to continue to search for the right person.”

Mike sat there in shock of what his sister had said. _What If he never found her?_

“Now, scram,” Nancy said, shoving him lightly, “I’m trying to watch something.” She turned up the volume knob on the TV and Mike reluctantly left the room.

He walked up to his own room and shut his eyes hard. _I’ll meet you,_ he thought, and he hoped she could hear him.

* * *

At age eight, he began watching the girls in school, not in a creepy way, just to see if their faces matched the emotions he could feel — they never did. He took out a book on the science of soulmates, which wasn’t very helpful. No one really seemed to have any solid answers to about how they worked, something to do with atoms and stardust, which to an eight-year-old (even one who read at a ninth grade level) sounded ridiculous.

* * *

At some point during the autumn of 1980, he found himself alone in the kitchen with his mother, helping her bake some muffins for Nancy’s bake sale (or something along those lines, he hadn’t really been paying attention). He watched his mother as she carefully filled up the patty pans, somehow managing to get every single one exactly even, which baffled him.

“Mom?”

“Hmm?” She doesn’t look up.

“How do you know when you’ve met your soulmate?”

Karen almost dropped the bowl of mixture. “You’re a bit young to be thinking about that, aren’t you, Mike?” She replied, after a moment.

Mike pulled himself up onto the kitchen counter. “I was just wondering, because what if I just see them in the street and then never again? How will I know it was them?”

Karen put down the bowl of mixture and looked at her tiny son sitting there on the kitchen bench, his legs barely dangling over the edge he was so small. He was young, too young to be worrying about things like this.

“Michael, one day, you’re going to meet a girl, who will be different from any other girl you’ve ever met, because she will be the girl meant for you. And maybe you won’t know right away, but it won’t take you long to work out, you’re a smart kid.”

Mike thought about what his mother said for a moment, it made sense, then he nodded and hopped down from the bench, leaving the kitchen.

“Michael!” Karen called out after him. “Do you want to lick out the bowl or not?”

Mike hurried back to the kitchen.

* * *

Sometimes the pain, sadness, scared or loneliness (or a melancholy mix of all four) was too great. Mike would lie on his bed and focus on his breathing and heart rate. He'd be able to feel her heart, as if beating next to his, and attempt to sync them.

"One day, when we meet," He'd whisper, staring at the ceiling, "I'll make you feel happy and safe. I promise.”

Somewhere, not too far away, a scared girl was sitting with her knees drawn up to chest all alone in a dark room. Every part of her hurt, but she could feel an emotion that wasn’t hers, and if she knew the word for it, she’d call it _empathy_.

* * *

In late 1982, and throughout '83, Mike began to get terrible headaches and often felt he was getting a nosebleed when he wasn't. He was placed on numerous medications as the headaches were interfering with school, but nothing worked, because they weren't his, they were hers. They weren't just normal ones either, they were monster headaches, so Mike came to the conclusion that they were being caused by someone. The amount of fear and pain she felt had to be because of someone. Adults didn’t listen when he told them the reasons behind the headaches, not even the doctor believed him, because having that strong of a connection just didn’t happen.

One night, after nursing a particular painful headache, Mike laid in his bed. There had to be a reason for him being able to feel her so strongly, it had to be a sign of something, but of what?

At that exact moment, he felt sudden rush of fear and panic. He sat up in bed, his own heart race quickening.

_Save her._

He had to save her.

* * *

He spent many days during the summer of 1983 biking to neighbouring towns and searching for her. Of course, he was too nervous to go up and talk to any girls around his age, so he watched them from afar, trying to picture how someone who has lived with fear and anger for so long would look. He was not successful, all the girls he saw looked (and sounded) too happy, and if there was one thing his soulmate had never felt, it was happiness.

Operation Save His Soulmate wasn’t going perfectly to plan, because it was impossible to save anyone if you didn’t know who or where they were.

It had occurred to him that maybe she was on the other side of the world, in some far off place like Australia or Russia, but something — instinct, or maybe just hope — told him that she had to be close. That had to be one of the reasons he could feel her so strongly. So when her emotions were running exceptionally high, he’d run outside and shut his eyes. He’d try to block out noise and thoughts, and focus solely on her emotions, in a hope that they would direct him, like a needle of a compass.

It didn’t work, he’d often find himself walking into the forest, and then the emotions would die down, from flames to embers, and they would no longer direct him. One time, they led him all the way to Hawkins Energy Lab; he’d stared at the place through its fence — it seemed to leer over him, its grey, prison like building was anything but welcoming, and definitely not the sort of place a twelve-year-old girl. He sighed and walked home.

Operation Save His Soulmate wasn’t going to plan at all.

* * *

November the Sixth, 1983. He’ll remember that date for as long as he lives, the day when everything began. He could feel something was different, and he should’ve realised that something was about to change. Maybe that way, he could’ve saved Will and the others from a whole lot of pain. He and the rest of the boys were into their eighth hour of the campaign, when he felt it — her panic, fear, her heart racing at the speed of light. She was screaming, he knew that because he could actually hear her, which was a first. Over the years, he had gotten good at compartmentalising her emotions — she’d been feeling anxious all day, but he’d managed to ignore it — but this? This was too much.

He pressed his hands over his ears to try and block out her screams, but it wasn’t working, the screams were inside his head; he crouched down, his eyes shut tight as his own heart began to beat into overdrive.

He was vaguely aware of the other boys crowding around him. “Mike? Mike! Are you okay? What’s wrong, Mike?!”

He didn’t reply, he couldn’t, he was too scared that if he did he’d vomit. He had no idea what was going on, whatever was going, she was scared it was going to kill her, and he was scared it would kill him too.

Suddenly finding the ability to control his own limbs again, he raced up the basement stairs, and dashed into the bathroom. He lent over the toilet, and wretched into it.

He sat there, slumped against the wall, trying to control his breathing. The screaming had stopped, but the fear and panic was just as evident.

But there was a new emotion, something mixed into the fear and the panic — excitement.

“Mike?” It was Lucas, knocking on the bathroom door. “Are you okay?”

Mike stood up slowly. “Y-yeah, I think so,”

He unlocked and opened the door, a concerned Lucas stood in front of him.

“Just one of my headaches, I’m okay now,”

Lucas didn’t look like he believed him.

“I think I might just have had food poisoning or something, as well,” Mike added, seeing Lucas’ sceptical expression.

“You sure you’re alright? Because we can get your mom—”

“No, not my mom. I’m fine, let’s just keep playing,” Mike walked past Lucas and headed for the basement. Lucas watched him for a moment, something was wrong, and Mike wasn’t telling him. It frustrated Lucas, because above all, all he wanted was to help his friends. He sighed, and followed Mike down to the basement.

Not too far away, a girl was running through a forest; her bare feet hardly touching the ground she was running so fast. She was free, for the first time in forever, and adrenaline was coursing through her veins. She ran into the night, away from her captors and towards her soulmate.

* * *

Mike awoke the next morning to a day like any other, except for one difference (he would soon discover that everything was different, but that’s for later), he felt — or rather, she felt — anticipation, an emotion he’d never known her to feel.

Anticipation when he woke up, curiosity as he got dressed, exhilaration as he ate breakfast, and anticipation once again as he brushed his teeth.

However, all care for his soulmate’s new emotions dissolved when Chief Hopper told them Will was missing; that’s when he realised everything was different.

Dustin and Lucas were babbling about Mirkwood; Mike sat in the middle, annoyed at the two of them, but mostly shocked — things like this just didn’t happen in Hawkins.

In a voice so deep and stern that they couldn’t help but be intimidated by him, Chief Hopper told them not to interfere, to go home, and not to do any detective work, despite their many protests.

“What are we going to do?” Mike asked the second they were out of earshot of Hopper.

“You heard the chief,” Lucas said.

“So we’re just going to do nothing?” Mike asked incredulously.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Lucas replied.

“We can’t really do anything big,” Dustin said to the two of them, “Did you hear Hopper? He sounded like he’d kill us if we don’t do what he said!”

“Hopper wouldn’t do that,” Mike protested.

Dustin rolled his eyes. “It’s called a figure of speech, Mike.”

Yet that night they found themselves out in the forest by Mirkwood, the rain thundering down.

Out there, in that same forest, she was there also.

The darkness was almost oppressive, and the forest for the first time in their lives felt small, as if the darkness was closing in on them.

The rain continued to pour down, the drops like bullets against the ground; a crack of thunder echoed suddenly through the trees.

The further they searched, the harder the rain came down, the darker it got, and the more helpless the whole situation began to feel.

It was Dustin who voiced his concerns first, “Guys, I really think we should turn back!”

Lucas fired back with a retort, which was Mike’s signal to tune himself out.

He could hear something… or rather he could hear _someone_.

Less than ten feet away, a girl was crouched in a bush, her heart racing as she watched the boys in front of her; her eyes fell on one of the boys, and she couldn’t say what it was about him, but a part of her was drawn to him, and before she knew what she was doing, she had rushed out of the bushes and was standing there in plain sight, waiting for them to see her.

They spun around, and she winced in the sudden beam of light from their torches, but there she stood, chest heaving, rooted to the spot; terrified.

Mike stared at the figure in the torch light, and it took him a second to process that she wasn’t boy, but a girl with a shaved head.

He stared at her, but it wasn’t the strangeness that made him stare, the shaved head, the large yellow Benny’s Burger shirt, or the fact that she was out in a forest in a storm in the middle of the night, there was just something about her, that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

“Hello?!” Lucas said loudly to the girl, stepping towards her; bringing Mike back to reality.

The girl stepped away from Lucas, scared and unsure.

“We’re looking for our friend, have you seen him?” Lucas asked slowly and deliberately.

She didn't reply, looking wildly at the other two boys, her eyes finding Mike’s.

He could see her emotions in them.

She was scared. She needed help.

He was so preoccupied in his own thoughts and own goings-ons that he didn’t put the fact that what his soulmate was feeling and what the strange girl was feeling were the same, together.

“Maybe she doesn’t speak English,” Mike offered.

“Or maybe she’s one of those savage children who are raised by wolves,” Dustin said in awe.

“I really highly doubt that, Dustin,” Mike replied.

“Look, whoever she is, she isn’t Will, which is who we need to find.” Lucas said firmly. “Let’s keep looking,”

“No,” Mike found himself saying, “we should go back, Dustin was right, it could be dangerous, and plus we’re not going to find him in these conditions, and —” he looked over at the girl “— she’s lost, we should help her.”

“We set out to find Will, and that’s what we’ll do!” Lucas responded stubbornly.

“We’re not going to find him like this, Lucas!” he gestured haphazardly to their surroundings. “Let’s go back to mine and figure out what to do there.”

“C’mon, Lucas, we’ll go tomorrow after school,” Dustin suggested.

Lucas sighed, he knew when he’d lost an argument, and he wasn’t afraid to admit it. “Okay, we’ll go,” he began to trudge off in the wrong direction.

“Uhh, Lucas?” Dustin called after him.

“Yeah?”

“It’s the other way.”

“Oh…” Lucas turned around and walked quickly in the correct direction this time, Dustin following after him.

Mike glanced at the girl. “Are you okay?”

No reply.

“Do you want to come with us?”

No reply.

“Are you cold?”

No reply.

“Here, you can have my jacket,”

No reply.

Mike shrugged off the jacket and approached the girl carefully, she took a step back, her eyes wide and fearful. He held the jacket out, she hesitated, before taking it and draping it over her shoulders. She nodded a thank you to Mike, a small smile ghosting her face.

“Mike!” Dustin called out. “Hurry!”

“Come with me,” Mike said to the girl, “I’ll keep you safe, I promise.”

He began to walk, slowly, so she’d know to follow.

She watched him, and after a moment — for a reason unbeknownst to even herself — she followed him.

* * *

Lucas rolled his eyes when he saw Mike emerge from the forest, the girl following him.

“We don’t know anything about her, this is a bad idea,” he said, as if the others were idiots.

“We know she’s scared and lost,” Mike argued, getting onto his bike.

Lucas sighed dramatically, but didn’t reply otherwise, as he hopped onto his bike.

Mike looked back at the girl, who was standing beside his bike looking lost and confused. Mike patted the back of the bike. “Sit here.”

She stared at him, her eyes wide, as if she’d never seen a bicycle; Dustin and Lucas both exchanged looks.

Mike patted the back of the bike again, and she took a tentative step forward before swinging her leg over the end of the bike, she grabbed ahold of Mike’s waist (so tightly that he could feel her fingers digging into his skin through his clothes) to pull herself up.

“Yeah, just like that,” he said encouragingly.

“She good?” Dustin called out, gesturing to the girl with his head.

“Yeah, I think,” Mike replied, turning his head to look at her, but her expression was just the same as before: wild, desperate, lost.

The boys began to peddle, and Mike heard the girl inhale sharply, and her hands tighten even more around him.

“It’s okay!” he said to her, his words carried away with the wind. “It’s okay!”

She didn’t reply.

* * *

“Eleven,” she murmured, pointing at herself.

None of the strangeness of the fact that she had a tattoo and a number for a name really processed in Mike’s mind; maybe that’s just what having your best friend go missing does though, everything else, no matter how odd, just seems pointless to fret over.

They’re in his basement and she’s sitting in a fort he constructed for her.

“Well my name’s Mike, short for Michael. Maybe we can call you El for short,” he suggested, kneeling in front of her.

Eleven nodded quickly, and Mike felt a sudden stroke an emotion that was almost like happiness, but not quite, come from his soulmate.

“Well… goodnight El,” he said to her, standing up.

She looked up at him, her large brown eyes shining in thanks. “Night, Mike,”

He smiled at her before he dropped the edge of the blanket down, and it fell down over the fort, hiding El from the world.

El listened to Mike’s footsteps as he climbed the stairs out of the basement; she heard the door at the top shut and she began to cry, and no amount of joy at the fact that the nice boy had given her a letter name, rather than a number name, could stop the tears. She was overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the last 24 hours — the bath, the monster, escaping, Benny, killing the two men, running and hiding, and finally being found by Mike.

She cried until it hurt, and she let out 12 years of pain with those tears; outside, the sky was crying too.

Upstairs Mike lay in his bed, unable to sleep; all he could think about was the strange girl in the basement (the strangeness of her was beginning to hit him); then he began to feel the pain of his soulmate. She was crying somewhere, he could tell, and he suddenly found tears on his own cheeks; he began to cry harder, not just because of what she was feeling, but because his friend was missing and he had no idea where he was or how to help him.

Downstairs, Eleven began to cry harder, as a sudden wave of helplessness that did not belong to her washed over her.


	2. During

He looked over the edge of the cliff, at the still blue-black water, and tried to block out the cries of Dustin, Troy, and James. 

He breathed in deeply. 

_ This is how it ends. _

He couldn’t let them hurt Dustin, he had to jump.

He might be okay, maybe.

He wondered where El was. He hoped she knew he was sorry.

He wondered how Will was. He hoped he was okay, he hoped they’d find him.

Breathing in deeply, he jumped, and he was falling, and it was both the strangest and most terrifying feeling he’d ever experienced. 

Not far away, Eleven felt it too, this infinite helpless feeling, and her breath caught in her throat. With anger coursing through her veins, she stopped Mike mid-fall, and she felt his shock and bewilderment as she lifted him back into the air and onto the cliff.

Mike, shaken from his jump and rescue, suddenly felt the power of a storm inside of him, and he looked up, and there she was.

Eleven. A storm in a girl. Anger and power in human form.

And it hit him as she pushed James back with her mind and broke Troy’s arm, it was her. She was his soulmate.

“Go,” she growled, and her voice held such power, such command that Mike doubted there was a soul alive that wouldn’t fear her in that moment.

Troy and James ran, and Dustin chased after them, yelling gleefully.

Mike felt it before he saw it: she was weakening. She fell, and he ran to her.

“El,” he murmured, taking one of her hands in his.

He’d been drawn to her from the start, this strange girl that he;d found in the woods, but the tenderness he felt for her in that moment was indescribable.

Tears filled her eyes and her lips trembled. “I opened it.” she confessed, and the fear she felt that Mike would hate her, physically pained him. “I’m the monster.”

Mike smiled, wondering how she couldn’t see how amazing she was. “No.” he said firmly. “No, El, you’re not the monster. You saved me. Do you understand? You saved me.”

Gently, he pulled her up into a hug, wrapping his arms around her tightly. He felt he soften and relax almost immediately. Dustin joined them, wrapping his arms around both of them, and the three stayed like that for a long time, holding each other, warming each other.

 


	3. After

All at once, the flashing of the lights and the screaming of El and the monster stopped, leaving the boys in a room filled with a sudden eerie silence.

The pain had stopped too, the pain that had been so great that Mike thought his heart was going to be ripped from his chest with it.

Mike looked up, his eyes searching for El through the tears.

She wasn’t there.

Mike stood up quickly, “El! EL!” he called desperately. “ELEVEN!”

Dustin and Lucas called for her too, but Mike could barely hear their cries. He was trying to focus, to find El’s emotions, but the part of his heart he constantly felt her was empty for the first time in years.

“No,” he whispered to himself, his eyes shut tight. “El, where are you?”

“Mike,” he heard Lucas murmur, and he felt a hand on his shoulder.

Mike’s eyes snapped open, and he jerked Lucas off. “No!” he shouted fiercely, tears running down his cheeks. “No!” he repeated louder. “We have to find her!”

“Mike,” Dustin choked, “please, Mike,”

Mike looked from Lucas to Dustin wildly, at their upset faces, before shutting his eyes once more, and searching for El’s emotions with a hopeless desperation.

Nothing.

Mike opened his eyes to see Lucas and Dustin both staring back at him, concerned, and he broke.

“She’s gone,” he sobbed, and he felt as if the world was splitting down the middle and he was falling endlessly through it. 

Dustin rushed to hug Mike, practically crushing him in an embrace; Mike felt himself sob uncontrollably. “She… I can’t,” he choked, “I can’t feel her anymore. I can always feel her, and now I can’t.”

Lucas walked over and wrapped his arms around the pair of them. He and Dustin exchanged a look of anguish, as their friend cried his heart out between them.

* * *

He couldn’t sleep that night, he lay awake, his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Mike couldn’t describe the incredible emptiness he felt now that she was gone, like a part of him had died with her.

But that was the thing.

It had, because that’s what soulmates were: a part of you.

And she was gone, dead.

He’d promised to keep her safe, to make her happy all those years ago, and he’d failed.

Mike shut his eyes, and felt the tears well up in them.

“I’m sorry, El,” he whispered to the darkness, his voice trembling.

He opened his eyes and the tears rolled down the side of his face. “I’m so sorry,” he rolled over onto his side, and shut his eyes tight, begging for sleep.

* * *

He must’ve fallen asleep at some point, because he woke up the next morning determined not to think or cry about El at all that day. Will was alive, and he was supposed to be happy, and he hated himself for not being happy. What kind of friend was he?

He sat up slowly, his body aching. He felt old, as if he’d aged 8 years rather than 8 days since all of this had started. With heavy steps, he walked to the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror above the sink; his eyes were red and puffy from crying last night, and the rest of his face was so pale in contrast.

He splashed his face with water and shut his eyes, taking a few deep breaths.

_ Don’t think about her, don’t. Think about Will. _

And then he felt it — a spark, a heartbeat that didn’t belong to him.

He opened his eyes and stared back at himself in the mirror, a grin spreading slowly across himself face.

_ She’s alive. _

* * *

He practically raced to the hospital after wolfing down down his breakfast so fast he almost choked.

“Lucas! Dustin!” he shouted into his SuperCom as he pedalled to the hospital. “Get to the hospital! Now! Over!”

He burst into Will’s room, half expecting for Lucas and Dustin to be there already — they weren’t, just Joyce, snoozing in a chair in the corner. She practically jumped through the roof at the sound of Mike entering.

“Wha— What…” she looked around, disoriented. 

“Oh, sorry,” Mike apologised, but Joyce didn’t seem to process this.

“Will! Will,” she got up and walked over to Will, lying in the bed.

Will, who’d been reading a book, but it down and smiled at his mom, as she stroked Will’s hair. 

“You’re here, you’re here,” she whispered, her eyes filling up with tears, and Mike felt as if he was watching something private, and looked away.

“I’m here, Mom,” Will murmured, and she nodded, a single tear falling down her cheek. 

Wiping her eyes, she looked up at Mike. “Hi, Mike,” she said, and Will grinned broadly at him.

“Hi.”

“You’re here early,” Joyce commented, as Mike perched himself on the end of Will’s bed. “I suppose you and the other boys will spending a lot of time here,”

Mike nodded, but his mind wasn’t on what Joyce was saying, it was on what El was feeling — cold, alone, scared.

“And Mike,” Joyce said to him, sensing that he wasn’t entirely there. Mike looked up at her. “I’m sorry about Eleven, I wish I could thank her for what she did for me,”

“Thanks,” Mike gulped, and Joyce smiled kindly at him.

The other boys arrived within the next ten minutes; like Mike, they entered loudly and breathlessly.

“Mike!” Lucas gasped. “What is it?”

Mike glanced quickly at Joyce and shook his head. “Later.” 

It wasn’t until two hours later, when the boys were finally left alone.

“Okay, Mike, tell us what’s up,” Dustin said immediately.

“What do you mean?” Will asked, looking from Dustin to Mike.

Dustin shrugged. “We don’t know, Mike was acting like something had happened earlier,”

All three of the boys were looking at Mike now, who much to their amazement, was grinning from ear to ear.

“El’s alive.”

There was a pause as the boys processed this, and Dustin was the one who broke who the silence. “What? How do you know?”

But before Mike could even begin to answer, all three of them were bombarding him with questions.

“What?”

“How?”

“Where is she?”

“How do you know?”

“Then what happened to her?” 

“I can feel her!” Mike blurted out, once he there was a gap in their questions. “I can feel her,” he repeated, and they stared at him, eyes wide.

“What do you mean?” Will asked, confused.

“El’s his soulmate,” Lucas told Will in a playful tone, and Mike felt his cheeks redden.

“Whoa,” Will looked at Mike, “really?”

Mike coughed loudly. “Uh, yeah,”

“If you can feel her now, why couldn't you feel her before, when she disappeared?” Dustin asked.

Mike shrugged. “I dunno, killing the Demogorgon would’ve taken all the strength out of her, she must’ve been unconscious.”

“So what do we do? Should we tell the Chief?” Lucas suggested cautiously.

“I… I don’t know,” Mike replied honestly.

“He helped us last time,” Dustin commented.

“Yeah, but only after we had worked everything out,” Mike pointed out, “so I figure, we should work it all out, and then tell the Chief.”

Lucas nodded in agreement. “How do we know where El is though?” he asked; all heads turned to Mike again, and he gulped.

“I think—” his eyes met Will’s “—I think she’s in the Upside Down.”

* * *

And so began Operation Save His Soulmate 2.0. Every spare moment the boys got over the next week was spent discussing ideas and plans — mostly at the hospital with Will — with the adults under the pretence that they were planning a rather excessive campaign for Dungeon’s and Dragon’s. 

The only problem was that they only way into the Upside Down was through the gate, and no matter what they schemed up, none of it seemed plausible enough to actually get them in and out Hawkins’ Energy unnoticed. 

But still they soldiered on, drawing maps and pouring over library books about the history of Hawkin’s Energy, amongst other things, in the hopes of finding a secret tunnel (“Top secret military bases always have secret tunnels!” Dustin had insisted). Mike and Will had even managed to worm some information out of their siblings about the Demogorgon, in case that would give them a clue on how to get in.

Mike, however, felt an urgency that the others did not; it was hard to do nothing but research when he could every single emotion that was running like electricity through El, and they were never good, always fear, isolation and helplessness, and has the week wore on, Mike began to find himself feeling helpless too. Yet he knew he couldn’t give up, he’d promised her. He’d promised he’d save her all those years ago, and he;d praised that they’d go to the Snow Ball together, and he was not going to let either of those promises be broken.

* * *

Their breakthrough didn’t come till just over a week since Will’s return. It was his first day back home, and the boys were sitting in a circle in his living room, various books, notes and diagrams spread out in front of them.

“All I’m saying,” Lucas said in a hushed whisper, not wanting Joyce to overhear, “is that El had to have gotten out of the lab somehow, and that’s how we’ll get in.”

It was the same thing he’d been saying for days now, and Mike countered it with the same thing he’d also been saying for days now. “She’d just opened the gate though, the whole place was probably in chaos, it wouldn’t have been hard for her just to slip out unnoticed.” 

“By using a secret tunnel,” Lucas retorted.

“We’ve searched the perimeter of the lab, we couldn’t find anything.” It was true, Dustin, Lucas, and Mike had spent a couple of hours riding around Hawkins’ Energy a few days ago with the hope of finding a clue, but they discovered nothing except the fact that the lab had somehow upped their already extensive security, making it impossible to sneak in there at all.

“But what if the tunnel doesn’t come out till later? Like somewhere in the forest?”

It was the first time he’d made this point, and the boys were silent for a moment.

As usual, it was Dustin who broke it, “It would take days to search the whole of the forest for a secret tunnel,” he said practically.

“But what of it’s our only way in, and our only way to save El?” Mike piped up.

The boys all shared glances, “Then I guess we have to do it,” Dustin murmured. “If only El could use her powers to communicate with us,” he added as an afterthought, but less than a split second after he said this Mike felt a shock of energy run through him, and the phone began to ring loudly and shrilly.

Will stood up to answer it, but Joyce, who’d been in the kitchen, go to it first.

“Hello?” she said into it; there was a pause before she repeated herself, louder as if the person on the other end couldn’t hear her or wasn’t replying.

Will looked around at all the boys, his eyes wide. “I used the phone,” he breathed, “when I was in the Upside Down, I used it to talk to mom.”

All four of them madly rushed over to Joyce and the phone, gathering around her.

“Mom, I think it might be for us,” Will said, “a— a friend from school,”

But Joyce looked disturbed, “It’s a child, they’re just breathing, Will,” her eyes were quickly filling with tears, memories of when it had been Will on the other end coming back to her. Then, as if something had startled her, she jumped and dropped the phone.  Mike grabbed for the swinging phone, “Eleven?!” he called desperately into it, his own eyes beginning to tear up.

He felt hope burst from his chest, her hope.

“Mike?” whispered the voice on the other end, and a tear trickled down his cheek, and it was no longer just her hope he was feeling, but his too.

“El, we’re coming, okay, we’re gonna get you out of there, I promise.”

Hope and happiness blossomed through them both. “Promise,” she whispered, her voice wavering ever so slightly.

Mike gulped to stop himself from crying. “Of course, El,”

But before she could reply, a bolt of electricity rushed through the phone so sharply that Mike dropped it in surprise; it hung upside down, swinging pointlessly, as he grabbed for it again. “El?!”

No reply.

He looked at the yellow phone, it was fried, blackened, well and truly dead.

His hands shaking, and his vision blurring with tears, he hung the phone up, and he looked at the others, who he realised had been staring at him the whole time.

“It stopped working,” he choked, and Joyce scooped him up into a motherly hug, and Mike cried softly into her for a few moments, before letting go, clearing his throat loudly and wiping his eyes, feeling embarrassed.

Dustin and Lucas were looking at him with pity, but Will wasn’t looking at him at all. He was looking from the boarded up hole in the wall to the alphabet on the wall to the phone, a broad grin spreading across his face.

Everyone was staring at him now, and he finally turned back to them, grinning still. “I’ve just had an idea,” he announced triumphantly.

The other three boys glanced at each other, before looking back at Will. “What is it?” Lucas asked.

“When the Demogorgon got me, it might’ve come through the gate, but it didn’t take me back through it. We were in the shed one minute and the next we were in the Upside Down.” Will paused, before looking up at Joyce and asking her, “You saw it come through the wall, right?”

“The- the monster, yeah,” Joyce stammered, looking bewildered.

“So did Jonathan,” Will commented.

“So?” Lucas asked, confused.

“So maybe we don’t need to go through the gate to find Eleven — the Demogorgon could create, like, temporary gates, what if El could do that?” Will explained with enthusiasm; the other boys nodded, beginning to understand his idea. “And we could do it here,” he continued, “because our house is so close to the gate, and the Demogorgon has come through here so many times, I think it means that…” Will trailed off, struggling to find the words.

“That the veil between the two worlds is thinner here,” Dustin finished for him.

“Yeah, exactly!” Will grinned.

“The more the dimensions are crossed, the thinner the veil between the two of them gets, in that spot, until you use it too much,” Dustin paused, frowning.

“And then what happens, Dustin?” Lucas asked with concern.

Dustin gritted his teeth. “And then it opens, permanently.”

“Like the gate,” Lucas murmured.

“Yeah, that Eleven opened,” Dustin replied quietly.

They all looked at each other for a moment.

“We have to risk it,” Mike said firmly, and his eyes seemed to dare them to argue with them; they all nodded solemnly.

“Mom?” Will murmured to Joyce, who had been looking wildly between the boys.

She looked down at her son. “Yeah?”`

“Could we do that?” 

“Is it to help save Eleven?” She asked.

Will nodded. “Yeah.”

“Then explain to me whatever it is you’re doing, and let’s do it.”

* * *

Over the next few hours, all their old plans and ideas were completely scrapped, and a new one was revised. The only problem was that their plan seemed to solely consist of Eleven creating a temporary gate, and getting herself out, despite the fact they had no proper way to communicate with El and convey this to her.

“We could try use the lights, like Mom did with me,” Will suggested.

Mike nodded, turning to Joyce. “Okay, what do I?”   

“Just talk,” she said, “talk and hope she hears you,”

Taking a deep breath, Mike stood up and faced the black alphabet on the wall.

“El?” he called loudly. “Eleven?” he could feel his heart beating in his head and his palms felt sweaty and his mouth suddenly dry. “Are you there?”

He waited a moment.

No response.

“Flash the lights once for yes, twice for no,” he added, as he realised he had no clue if El could read or write.

No response.

“El?” he called again, and his voice shook slightly.

He shut his eyes and breathed in deep, searching for her in his heart. 

Nothing.

He could feel nothing, and he wanted to scream.

But it wasn different, he wasn’t feeling an empty void, but rather a blocked one, like she was somehow stopping him from feeling her emotions.

“Mike?” And it was like Will was calling him from far away rather than a couple of feet next to him.

He opened his eyes. “Can you feel her?” Will asked softly, walking up to him, and gently tugging on his sleeves.

Mike shook his head, and held back his tears. “No,” he breathed, and he saw the boys exchange looks.

“Mike, honey,” Joyce whispered, “we can do this another day.”

Mike shook his head vehemently. “It’s, it’s like she’s blocking me or something, like she doesn’t want me to feel her,”

“Maybe she’s scared that she’ll open another permanent gate,” Dustin suggested carefully.

“Then why’d she call?” Mike asked, and nobody replied.

They were all lost for ideas, and remained still for seconds, maybe minutes, standing, and sitting, just existing.

Dustin, the serial silence breaker, spoke first. “Why don’t we just call her?”

His suggestion, so wildly simple, took the others a moment to process. “Call her?” Lucas asked. “How?”

“By calling the number from this house to this house,” he shrugged, as if it was obvious.

It sounded stupid for a moment, but that was the magic of Dustin, to be able to solve the most complicated of problems with the most painfully simple solutions.

Joyce looked at the boys. “Well, I guess we’ll need a new phone then.”

* * *

Mike glanced over at the others, then back at the phone; his heart pounding as he dialed the Byers’ number into their phone.

It rang, and rang; Mike stood there, his left leg jiggling and his right hand anxiously twisting the cord; all of sense seemed hypervigilant, as if not being to sense Eleven had made him able to sense everything else so much more. 

“Please pick up,” he murmured so quietly he could barely hear himself.

The phone stopped ringing; there was silence.

“El?” he breathed.

“Mike,” came her delicate reply.

“Eleven! We know how to get you out!” he told her excitedly, “We just need you to—”

“Mike,” she interrupted, and her voice trembled, but there was a firmness and seriousness to it that made him stop speaking. “I know what you’re going to say,” she said quietly, “I’ve been listening.”

“And you can do it?” he asked hopefully.

Silence.

“No,” she finally responded.

“No, El, you can, I know you can. I’ve seen what you can do it, and you can do this. I know it will hurt, El, I know, but,” he paused here and glanced back at the others, before edging away from them and dropping his voice, “we’ll be together again El, we can go to the Snow Ball, like we promised.”

She didn’t reply straight away, but he could tell she was crying, and it occurred to him that he could feel her again; she was no longer blocking him.

“Mike,” she finally responded, “there’s something outside, like the Demogorgon but worse. If I try to open a gate… it could come through.

“Worse than the Demogorgon?” His chest felt hollow with shock, and he heard the others exchange whispers.

“Yes,”

“How long has it been outside the house?”

“Since I last talked to you, I think it sensed my powers,” El told him quietly.

“El, you can’t stay there, you’re in danger!” He said hotly. “You have to come back, we can fight it, together.”

“Fight what?” Dustin asked, sounding slightly scared.

“Mike, it could kill us all,”

“It won’t. We’ll fight it. We’ll run. Together.”

“Mike…” she whispered, unsure.

“Nothing bad will happen. Promise.” he told her firmly.

“You can’t promise this. You can’t know,”

“El, please, you have to come back.” His voice broke on the last word and he once again blinked back tears — he seemed to be crying a lot lately.

“Mike,” Joyce came from behind him, and he turned around to face her, “put me on the phone.”

Mike handed it to her without protest, and stood back with the boys; Dustin reached out and squeezed his shoulder comfortingly. “She’ll come back,” he said to Mike, and Mike gave him a smile, before turning his eyes back on Joyce.

“El, honey, you can do this, okay? You are the bravest person I’ve ever met, did I tell you that?”

At those words Mike felt something in his chest that El had never felt before — that feeling one gets after bringing complimented, a mixture of pride and modestly, happiness and embarrassment — one of the world’s greatest feelings.

“Whatever monster is there with you, it won’t get you here. The second you get here, I’ll drive you far away from it, and you won’t have to fight it or think about it. Grown ups will take of it, because that’s what grown ups or supposed to do — protect children, and I know grown ups haven’t protected you before, darling, but they will now. You just have to come here, and let us help you, let me help you. I owe you so much.” Joyce’s voice throbbed with emotion, each word weighed down with it.

Joyce was silent as El replied to her and Mike searched her emotions for what she she might be saying. 

She was scared, which really could be a yes or a no.

“Whenever you’re ready, honey. You can do this.” Joyce said tenderly into the phone, and Mike’s heart leapt. She was coming.

Joyce hung up the phones and turned to the boys.

“Well?” Will asked, as if the temptation was killing him.

“She’s coming,” Joyce told them, “she’ll come through any moment now; everyone be ready to run to the car, okay?”

The boys all nodded silently. They all stood in the Byers’ living room, unsure of where to look and how long they’d be waiting.

Mike felt other emotions quickly mix in with the fear — anticipation, anxiety, hope.

She was getting ready.

The lights began to flash wildly, and they looked around desperately for Eleven. A dark void-like hole was beginning to form on the wall with the alphabet, and with it a feeling inside Mike’s chest as if his heart was being stretched like a rubber band. He clutched at his chest as the rubber band was stretched tighter and tighter, and felt as if it would snap at any moment. He shut his eyes to block out the dizzying array of lights but the colours still flashed before him as his chest grew ever tighter and the hole ever wider.

Then the screaming began.

It was the same scream from way back when they’d been playing Dungeons and Dragons, before Will had gone missing and they’d found Eleven. It was the same scream from when she’d first opened the gate, except this time it wasn’t only in Mike’s head — they could all hear it, and it was the sword of sounds, so piercing it sounded as if it would slice them in two.

They crouched together at the edge of the living room, their hands over their ears, as a wind picked up and the lights above them began to shake. A shadowy figure appeared in the dark hole, their mouth open in a scream.

And as suddenly as the chaos of the wind and screaming and light and the void hole had started, it stopped; the rubber band in Mike’s chest snapped and he let out a howl as pain coursed through his body like electricity, and Eleven tumbled out of the hole. She let out a whimper and lay on the floor, her knees drawn up to her chest, and began to sob, her pain pouring out.

Mike stumbled over to her, his body trembling with her pain, whilst the others looked at what the void hole had become, and exchanged fearful looks with each other.

“El,” Mike whispered, curling his fingers around hers, and caressing the back of her hand gently with his thumb.

“Mike,” she sobbed, and she weakly squeezed his hand. She had blood around her nose and her ears, and Mike realised his own nose was bloody.

“You did it,” he smiled, tears blossoming in eyes, “and I am so proud of you. So proud.”

She gave him the weakest of smiles through her tears, blood, and pain, and they both felt a small spark of hope shine in their hearts — their own, and each others.

“Mike,” Dustin said, interrupting the two, and with a shaking finger he pointed at the hole, “look.”

Mike looked up at the hole and gulped. A large, jagged hole that reached from the top of the wall to the bottom had replaced the void hole, and it revealed the bedroom behind it — but it was different. Colder, darker, covered in vines, and fleshy webs. It was the Upside Down, and a deep rumbling was coming from it.

“Boys, you need to go get in the car,” Joyce told them, attempting to keep her voice steady.

“But Mom—” Will tried, but Joyce gave him a look, and he shut his mouth, beckoning Lucas and Dustin to follow him to the car.

Joyce quickly scooped Eleven up in her arms. “You’re such a brave girl,” she whispered to her, as they walked out to the car, Mike trotting along beside them, “That was amazing, what you did.”

A ghost of a smile appeared on El’s face. “Thank you,” she breathed quietly; Joyce’s eyes sparkled with tears and she smiled.

Mike hopped into the back of the car with Lucas, and Dustin — Will was in the front — and Joyce lay El across their laps, placing her head gently on Mike’s lap. El reached blindly out for Mike’s hand; he took her her hand in his and he felt her relax almost instantly. Using his other hand he began to gently wipe away the semi-crusty blood on her face with his t-shirt.

Joyce sat in the driver’s seat, her fingers wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel that her knuckles were white; her eyes were glued to the house, waiting for some sort of movement.

A high-pitched noise echoed from the house — a roar, not a scream. It was not a noise made in fear or pain, but rather a noise made in blood-curdling anger. A noise of a predator. A monster.

Then all at once, the entire house caved in on itself, and the only thing left standing was the wall with the hole. They all stared, shocked, as a the outline of a large shadowy figure appeared in the cloud of dust from the collapsed house. 

“Holy  _ shit _ !” yelled Dustin, and his voice seemed to lift the paralysing fear off everyone; Joyce put the car in reverse, slammed her foot on the pedal, and they shot backwards at an alarming rate.

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!” Dustin cried, as Joyce spun the car around, and drove away from her ruined home as fast as possible.

Dustin, Lucas, and Will all turned in their seats, to stare at the horror they were leaving behind; Mike shut his eyes and concentrated on his and El’s synchronised heart beats, and the feel of her hand in his.

_ It’s going to be okay _ , each beat said.  _ It’s going to be okay _ ,  _ it’s going to be okay _ .

 

 


	4. Epilogue

**One Month Later**

 

Mike fiddled nervously with his tie as he sat on the couch waiting for the others to arrive. Lucas arrived first, and Mike fiddled with his tie.

“Mike, relax, you’re just taking El,” Lucas told him.

“You don’t get it,” Mike huffed.

“Yeah, I know,” laughed Lucas, “you’re gonna—” and then he proceeded to make kissing noises at Mike.

Mike shoved him lightly away. “Shut up!” He told Lucas, his face glowing the deep red that only an embarrassed twelve-year-old could achieve.

Dustin arrived, and Mike fiddled with his tie.

“Mike, you gotta stop, you’re undoing the knot,” Dustin said to him.

Mike let his hands fall to his sides, but continued to move his fingers distractedly.

“He’s worried about—” Lucas made more kissing noises; Dustin laughed, and Mike flushed the red of before.

“You’ll be fine, Mike,” Dustin said with a shrug. “El adores you.”

“Yeah, she’s your soulmate,” Lucas added, less teasingly and more matter-of-factly.

_ Soulmate _ . This idea that you were put on this Earth to be with one person. An idea he’d been chasing for as long as he could remember. You’d think the whole destiny and meant-to-be-together bit would help make everything easier, or at least less awkward and nerve wracking. Now that everything was safe — or at least seemed it — he often felt awkward around El; it was strange being placed in a normal adolescent situation with her after everything that had happened, and it had all only ended two weeks ago, but it seemed like a lifetime ago.

The doorbell rang and woke Mike from his thoughts.

“Ted! That’ll be them!” Karen called from the kitchen. “Get the car ready!”

Ted replied with a humpf, and Lucas and Dustin made kissy noises at Mike. Mike went to answer the door, swatting Lucas and Dustin away as if they were flies.

“Hi Will! Hey Mrs Byers,” Mike greeted them brightly, and then his eyes fell on El. “H—hey El,” he said, his voice faltering slightly.

Her hair had grown enough in the past 6 weeks for El to use a headband; she had a simple black one in her hair, and she was wearing a satiny pale purple dress.

El smiled gently and her deep brown eyes sparkled. “Hi Mike,” she said in her soft voice, and she felt his heart flutter. He loved the way she said his name, the way she emphasised the ‘k’. It never failed to make him feel jittery and happy.

“You look… really pretty.” he said, surprised how it easy it was to tell her that.

He’d never seen her smile so wide, she was beaming, and light shone from her eyes. “Thank you,” she murmured.

“Hi Mike!” Will said loudly, a cheeky smirk on his face.

Mike tore his eyes quickly away from El and felt his face go red again — he had a feeling it would be doing that a lot tonight.

“H-hi Will,” he stammered.

Will smiled knowingly, before turning to his mom. “See ya, Mom,” he said.

“Bye, Joyce,” El said.

Joyce gave both Will and El a hug. “You both look wonderful,” she said, giving El a quick kiss on the crown of her head. “Bye, Mike, tell your mom I say,” Joyce said to him, before leaving.

“Okay,” Ted called from the living room. “Everybody ready?”

The five of them piled into the car and Ted drove them to the school, which had been decorated with tacky silver snowflakes on the outside.

The inside of the gym was even worse. Uneven blue and white streamers hung limply from the ceiling, along with a large disco ball, and the walls were completely plastered in the same snowflakes from outside; a huge sign, which had obviously been written by the students themselves, said ‘SNOW BALL’ in block letters had been half-coloured in with white paint, but they must’ve run out of paint, because the rest was clearly done with white-out, and the whole thing was drowning in silver glitter, but it made Mike smile. What better way to start El’s normal life than a tacky school dance?

Mike watched El as she looked around at the gym in amazement, the reflection of the silver snowflakes and the disco ball sparkling in her eyes like stars.

“C’mon, let’s go get some food,” Dustin said, motioning them over to the snack table.

“Do you ever think about anything other than eating?” Lucas asked as he and Will followed him, leaving Mike and El alone.

“Sometimes I think about sleeping,” Dustin replied.

El turned to Mike. “This place is really pretty,” she said genuinely.

He laughed nervously. “That’s one word for it.”

“This is the same place,” she said suddenly, looking around.

“What do you mean?”

“Where we made the bath.”

“Yeah, yeah it is.”

“It looks different.”

Mike looked her and smiled. “That’s what happens, I guess,” he replied after a moment, lost for words.

“I guess,” she breathed, her eyes still holding the stars.

The music, which was boppy, was nothing like the slow, romantic music Mike had been imagining would be playing, and he knew this was a perfect moment to ask El to dance, if the music was actually something one could dance to and not just jump up and down ridiculously to.

They joined the others by the food, and spent the next 20 minutes or so semi-mocking some of the kids who were ‘dancing’ to the music. El, much to Mike’s delight, was laughing, and even joined in on the mock jumping.

The lighting softened and the music slowed down, and Dustin said loudly, “Lucas! Will! We need to go over there for a reason!” before dragging them off to another corner of the gym.

Mike cleared his throat loudly. “Do you wanna dance?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound as awkward as he felt.

El smiled. “Yes, Mike,”

He held out a hand and she took it, and together they walked away from the dark walls onto the gently lit dance floor, when a thought suddenly hit him. “Wait, El, do you know how to dance?”

El smiled mysteriously at him, and placed his hands on her hips and her hands on his shoulders.

Mike smiled, once again amazed by the girl before him. “You do know how to dance.”

“Joyce and Jonathan have been teaching me,” she told him, as they began to dance slowly. “I like it, I like music.”

“You’re… you’re really good,” Mike told her.

“Thank you,”

They danced a few moments in silence, both marvelling in the fact that, after everything, they were at the Snow Ball, together.

“Mike,” El said after a moment, “can I ask you something?”   
“Anything, you know that El,” he replied, looking into her eyes.

“Why can I... feel you?” she asked carefully.

“Feel me?”

“What you feel? I can feel it to.” she explained.

“Oh, do you… do you know what a Soulmate is?”

El shook her head.

“It’s like this person… who you have a special connection, an emotio nal connection with.”

“And you’re that person to me?” she asked.

He nodded. “And you’re that person to me.”

She smiled. “I like that,”

He smiled too, widely. “I like that too.”

A warmth that was both their own and the other’s, blossomed through them, and it would remain with them for the many years of their long life, together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope enjoyed that! please tell me what you thought in the comments! thank you for reading xx


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